Stevens Defends His Aggressive Style : Politics: The councilman’s recent outburst typifies his combative approach. Observers disagree on whether it hurts or helps his constituents.

On the day that he was sworn into office last December, San Diego City Councilman George Stevens put the audience and his colleagues on notice that “I did not come here to go along to get along.”

Although Stevens’ aggressive, often combative behavior at City Hall has long since demonstrated just how prophetic that remark was, any lingering doubts were eliminated this week when he called fellow Councilman Tom Behr a “white racist boy” and threatened to “kick your ass.”

The outburst after Tuesday’s council meeting is perhaps the most extreme example of the hard-charging, abrasive style that has typified Stevens’ first eight months in office--a style for which Stevens makes no apologies.

“Everybody just walks around on eggshells here--nobody says nothing,” Stevens said in an interview Wednesday in his City Hall office. “Well, I don’t walk on eggshells. I’m not a diplomat, and I’m not going to play one when it’s not working.”

As with all else in politics, where perception is sometimes more important than reality, Stevens’ actions draw markedly divergent interpretations from his supporters and skeptics.

From the perspective of many of his 4th District constituents, his assertive, sometimes belligerent demeanor is the forceful advocacy needed to highlight the daunting needs of a poor, crime-ridden district long ignored by City Hall. But many of his colleagues and others within City Hall increasingly view him as a bellicose grandstander who has done himself and his constituents a disservice by alienating individuals whose votes or support he needs to attain his goal of greater equity in city revenue and services for his district.

“The guy doesn’t have many friends on the council floor, and, ultimately, that’s going to hurt him,” said one council member who, like most interviewed, requested anonymity.

Tuesday’s confrontation with Behr brought into sharp focus the varying impressions formed of Stevens since he defeated then-4th District Councilman Wes Pratt last year in a campaign in which he pledged to be “a loud voice City Hall can’t ignore.”

The caustic clash between Stevens and Behr, who sit side by side on the council dais, followed months of escalating tensions between the two. Stevens believes that Behr, through chiding remarks and gestures in public and private, has intentionally sought, as he puts it, “to show me up.” Behr, meanwhile, has grown increasingly impatient with what he sees as Stevens’ oversensitivity and tendency to view every issue through a racial prism.

Those frustrations reached a flash point during the council’s debate Tuesday over paramedic services, a discussion during which Mayor Maureen O’Connor sought to limit each council member’s comments to three minutes.

When Behr interrupted to ask a question shortly before the council was to begin voting on the issue, Stevens said to O’Connor, “I thought you were going to limit these comments to three minutes.”

“Fine, then we should have started with you, since you went more than three,” Behr shot back.

“I’m tired of you challenging me about how I conduct myself!” Stevens shouted at Behr. “You let me conduct myself. . . . Don’t you ever put me down again. Don’t do it in public, don’t do it in private. Now, that’s the last time you’ll do it. . . . You respect me as I respect you.”

“I hope we can find some mutual respect,” Behr responded.

“Then shut up if you can’t find it,” Stevens replied.

After the meeting, Stevens followed Behr into his private office, where the rhetorical acrimony turned even nastier. During that brief encounter, Stevens called Behr a “white racist boy” and warned him, “If you show me up again, I’ll kick your ass.” When Behr finally asked Stevens to leave, he did so.

Stevens’ impolitic, harshly personal attack generally drew disapproval within City Hall, where even some of his defenders said that, although they understand his frustrations, they question his tactics.

“What bothered me is that something between them was aired openly and publicly, casting aspersions on all of us,” Councilwoman Valerie Stallings said.

But, within the city’s minority neighborhoods, there was strong support Wednesday for Stevens’ dogged determination to aggressively give voice to long-held frustrations of the black community, mixed with questions over whether Stevens’ attitude will help or hamper his efforts to find remedies.

Asked what blacks were saying about Stevens’ remarks, the Rev. George Walker Smith, perhaps San Diego’s best-known black community leader, replied, “They’re saying, ‘Amen.’ ”

“Just because Behr is white doesn’t mean George can’t say what he wants to say, especially when he asks for it,” Smith said. “I would probably have gone in his office and said, ‘You take your coat off, I’ll take my coat off, and let’s go.’ ”

Another longtime black community leader, who asked not to be identified, said Stevens is “in many ways keeping San Diego from turning into Los Angeles. George is down there telling Tom Behr, ‘I’ll take you outside and kick your white ass.’ Well, that may keep my brothers from burning down their communities like they did in Los Angeles.

“George tells the truth. He expresses the amount of frustration and anger that exists in the minority community . . . with a level of passion and frustration that we have not ever seen in San Diego.”

But Andrea Skorepa, executive director of the Casa Familiar human service agency in San Ysidro and an unsuccessful candidate for the 8th District council seat, suggested that Stevens’ confrontational style will backfire in the long run.

“I think the important thing to realize is that, when you get on the council, you cannot do things by yourself,” Skorepa said. “It takes five votes to do anything. The more coalition and alliance and bridge-building you can do among the different districts, the better off your district will be when it comes to getting the things it needs.”

The man unseated by Stevens, Pratt, called his successor’s attack on Behr “totally inappropriate” and “ridiculous.”

“George tries to intimidate people, embarrass them and intimidate them, and then he screams ‘racism,’ ” Pratt said. “But, if one isn’t intimidated by that, then he loses his cool or he’ll back off.”

Pratt also supported Behr’s attempt to force Stevens into addressing the concerns of minority groups other than blacks. Last month, for example, Stevens refused to sign a resolution honoring gay and lesbian history, saying he would not support “any legislation that would promote adultery or homosexuality.”

“You can’t very well say ‘African-Americans’ and exclude all other people who are minority groups,” Pratt said. “We should be about the business, the politics of inclusion.”

Since taking office, Stevens has championed the cause of African-Americans, lashing out at staff members and fellow council members who do not share his opinion of how integration and an equitable distribution of city resources should be achieved in government.

A case in point is his relationship with Behr, whose district includes a large Asian-American population. Nearly every time Stevens has questioned about how a particular program or contract would benefit blacks, Behr has countered that all minorities should be represented, not only African-Americans.

“Most of those other groups are already getting some representation,” Stevens said in the interview. “But African-Americans are still pounding on the door trying to get in, and I’m just trying to open it a little wider.”

One of Stevens’ top goals is to boost minority participation in city contracts, and, toward that end, he endorsed a study to determine whether the city has fairly awarded contracts to companies owned by minorities and women. The study is designed to show whether the city has developed a pattern of discrimination against minorities and whether the city’s practice of setting goals for minority representation is proper.

Although Stevens’ council colleagues, like him, are preoccupied primarily with the needs of their districts, some argue that Stevens approaches most issues from an unusually narrow perspective--one in which he is quick to frame philosophical differences in racial terms.

“I’ve not seen him do anything where he didn’t bring in the issue of discrimination,” one council member said.

“I’m getting tired of getting backed into a corner where you almost feel you have to do what George wants out of guilt for your white skin,” complained another council member.

Often critical of his fellow council members for postponing votes on crucial issues, Stevens displayed his disdain for political niceties earlier this month when he singled out O’Connor as a prime offender. Trying to douse the political brush fire, the mayor’s office called Stevens twice; when he returned the call, he reached O’Connor’s chief of staff, Ben Dillingham. Stevens said that, if O’Connor was concerned by his remarks, the mayor should come to the telephone herself, prompting Dillingham to curse at him and hang up.

Stevens professes to be largely unconcerned over his colleagues’ displeasure with his style, noting simply that “they’re not the ones who elected me or who I have to answer to.”

“They want to debate my style, and that’s fine,” Stevens said. “But what about their style? How about how they treat me and my district?

“I demand the same respect that I give them,” he said. “My attitude is, if you cannot compliment me when I do good, do not come in my face when you don’t like something I do. If you cannot pat me on the back for the 99 things I do right, I don’t want you in my face when I do one you don’t like. They’re not used to being challenged like this. Well, they’d better get used to it.”